Mail Art & a 4 o'clock

 This altered CD is being sent to a young person who attended my Mail Art workshop for kids at BBGB. He sent me some Mail Art almost immediately. I think this turned out really nicely. I like the illusion of depth and how the colors worked together to make this sort of a seamless illustration. It's no photo shop, but rather mu usual cut and past. The poem is from random bits of text. If I were the "hang on to all of my pieces" type of artist, I'd hang on to this one for sure. I really like it.  I hope the recipient will like this, oh, I first hope that it makes it through the mail. It's going "naked", not in an envelope.

It's been chilly here, yes, chilly, and gray and drizzly, so no pool for the past couple days. Here's photo of some flowers on my 4 o'clock bushes. This one is giving out two toned blossoms. Pretty cool. I have only 1 yellow bush, which is dismaying as I haven't seen any in the neighborhood to glean seeds from. I like the yellow flowers a lot. I hope my bush produces lots of seeds so I can assume I'll have more bushes in the future in that color. Any ideas about growing 4 o'clocks?

Mail Art & more

 I purchased a wonderful book of sunflower photos at the thrift store for $2, and yesterday, while my honey was teaching his collage workshop, I cut envelopes out of the photos.
Today, I used some of the left over bits to add to my dotty mail art.

 I can't stop punching holes in paper!! When will it end! I have some other ideas for mail art but, I think I'm punch-drunk, or have punch mania. ja ja ja

 I now have a second bird feeder. A round pale yellow one and the birds didn't have any trouble finding it. I snapped this photo with my phone through the kitchen window. The round one has birds in it and the orange rectangular one has a squirrel in it!  Here's where I got the bird feeders - Modern Artifacts.  Food for all on this very hot day. At this moment 99F/37C.

Here are the two Flat Rate Boxes that I've got packed up, almost packed up, to send to some soldiers. I'll send these in honor of the 4th of July, American celebration of Independence, hoping that our troops will come home soon. You can send books and treats to the troops in various ways, in the U.S. by joining Books for Soldiers.  

Garden fun

 Last year, my honey planted two calla lilies in the back garden. They were dark brown and I didn't like them because they blended into the color of the mulch. This year, surprise surprise, they returned with HUGE leaves and one (so far) lovely orange color bloom. I like this!

 Mr. or Ms. squirrel lurking by the bird feeder pole. I see you!

 Here he or she is again, waiting on the fence. Hoping I don't see him.

 Here he is balancing on the top of the shepherd's crook pole that holds the bird feeder. Clever little acrobat!

 YIKES! I've been noticed! When he saw me, he scurried down the pole and hid under a fern. I don't mind feeding him because the bird seed is inexpensive and he only eats the parts he likes, leaving plenty for the birds.

 I was trying to identify the little birds we get. I used the telephoto on my camera. Here's a shot with one in the feeder & 2 waiting.

Here's a blurry view. One just jumped into the feeder, others waiting. They're sparrows. I've identified 2 kinds so far, plus Cardinals, oh so easy to I.D. and some big grackles. One grackle came yesterday and couldn't figure out how to get inside to the seed. Oh dear, maybe brain damaged, as the others of his kind had no trouble the other day. Could that be possible?

Caught in the act + mail art, of course.

 I am so pleased with how this piece of Mail Art turned out. I'd cut up an old photo (left over from back in the days of film) showing a building in which we'd considered buying a flat.  It wasn't doing anything for me until I turned it on an angle and then it worked! With the addition of some circles and letters, I had a piece that was satisfying.

Look closely at my BIRD feeder. Can you see the happy critter, feasting on BIRD food. I was able to snap this before he/she spotted me. It looked over and then scurried down the pole and ran towards the big tree then realized that I was by the big tree, it was confused, which way to run! It froze. I went back into the house and it raced up the tree, heart thumping, no doubt.

Whirlwind

 This is one of the collages that I did last year for Papergirl San Francisco. I had fun doing it and was happy to see that there is one planned for Zagreb, June 2012. It's something we all can participate in, so here's the link: Papergirl Zagreb. I think we'll all have fun doing this, don't you? No jury, no fee (just postage to Croatia) no framing, nothing but making something to share. Ivana will be very excited to hear from you that you plan to do this with her.

 My honey said "Quick, look!" This squirrel was trying to get on the porch or was looking for one of the pumpkins to chew on. Hopefully, it sound them, outside the fence by the garage. We're down to 2 little pumpkins being chewed on.

See this tiny pastry? It's a pain au raisin and it's one of the things I'm looking forward to.

Sightseeing and more.

 Our nephew and his wife are visiting us from California.  We wish it weren't so hot and humid but we couldn't do much about that so on a very very hot day, we headed up the pike to Washington, D.C.
Here's photo from inside the huge Air and Space Museum.

 The Capitol building was just so picture perfect. My photo looks like a postcard, right? To bad it was so hot that we felt like we were getting heat stroke! We tried to stay indoors for a long time.

 This Merman sculpture was at the National Museum of American Indians, which is a gorgeous building, with fabulous exhibits. We spent a very long time there and learned a lot, plus we ate lunch there, as there's interesting food choices based on various native foods. Lots of vegetarian choices!

 The next day, fully recovered, we went to the Virginia State Capitol building, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. We took a tour, actually 2, We caught the end of one, and then picked up the start of another, and we learned a lot. This is a sculpture of George Washington, done from life and life sized. 

 Sad news about the dove. Yesterday, I checked on her, and this is what was left: her simple twiggy nest was a mess, and there were some feathers, and that was it. No birds. A hawk? A cat? Who knows, but we're sad she's gone.

 Last night we had a birthday party in our patio for both myself and my honey. We invited our friends, and the neighbors, and asked them to bring food to share. What a feast. All of our friends are very good cooks. There were salads, fruits, cheeses, noodles with peanut sauce, a Turkish dish, a Persian dish, shrimp, chicken and pasta, pork barbeque, and more, plus desserts, and our birthday cakes. We didn't get a good photo of them as we just started to cut them up and eat them. 

 Mine had a curly design and my honey had stripes, like his art work. They were tres leches cakes and quite delicious. We danced a lot, which was fun. AND no one called the police on us. Possibly because   all the neighbors were there. Who's left to complain?

I had to include this little critter. This squirrel was very friendly. He came up to us while we were sitting on a ledge at the Police Memorial in D.C. I think maybe people sit out there at lunch time and share with the squirrels. It was quite used to people. 

Vegan Apple cake and a squirrel

I made a really delish vegan apple cake from a recipe that my daughter created. The recipe is here. Because we make our own applesauce, there are a lot of apple cores to be dispersed, rather than tossed in the garbage bin. I put them in our big tree in the back garden. In the notch of the tree and in a little place where some shoots had been cut off leaving prongs of sorts.  Yesterday, my husband came up to my studio and said "quick, there's a squirrel sitting there eating the apple core." It was still there when I got to the kitchen window and I scored this photo of it. So cute how it held the core and ate all around it.

This morning, while returning from a walk over to have my doctor check out myh achy knee, I came upon a squirrel lying in the alley behind my house. I thought, Oh, no, it's the little apple chomping fellow. When I entered my back garden, another squirrel was sitting on the edge of my garage! Probably the apple core chomper, right?

PS my knee is fine, just a bout of tendonitis. Whew!

My yard

With the coming of cooler weather, I've been enjoying sitting in my yard again. It's so peaceful. Though the view from my bench isn't much of a vista, that I get when I sit at the table and look east at a more open space with lots of trees, it is a quiet and restful yard. I put apple core into a place on my tree trunk where a small branch had been trimmed off. Squirrels come to get their treat. We haven't had many squirrels this summer because there've been a lot of hawks, but the ones that do come by really amuse me.